For a while I’ve been wondering how I would teach Ben or Jessica to program if they ever expressed an interest. (When I first wrote that sentence it only included Ben. Sigh.)
You see, when I started to learn about programming, home computers were really simple. They usually had one high-level language available, generally BASIC, so that’s what most people used to learn. I could switch on our trusty BBC Master — which would boot up in about 1 second — and type:
- 10 PRINT “Hello”
- 20 GOTO 10
- RUN
I would then marvel at what I’d achieved and change line 10 to the rudest word I could think of.
Today, there’s a wealth of options when it comes to programming but which one would give that immediate PRINT “Hello” sense of achievment?
Having read a couple of articles and posts on the subject of teaching programming, I’ve come round to the conclusion that a modern scripting language like Python or Ruby would be good. These allow you to do single-line programs just like the BASIC example above but have the advantage of scaling all the way up to the new hotness like Ruby on Rails.
What precipitated this post? Xbeeb! Old systems don’t die, they just get emulated. Maybe I’ll show those kids how we did it in my day…